Seeker of Knowledge

Hello, @ibsby98! First of all, good luck in your grad school journey. I hope this does not sound discouraging, but I personally do not think that paying for grad school out of your own pocket is a good idea, unless you are in a field where you can hope to find a lucrative industry job that pays for the investment you made. (And taking a loan basically means paying for the school out of your own pocket.) Few fields promise a future with good opportunities to make money (though Human-Computer Interaction may indeed be one of those fields, of course), and if you're going into academia, there is rather high chance of ending up unemployed or employed without tenure and its associated benefits - and in that case the pay sucks regardless of field. That is why, I think, it is more advisable to try to get into a fully-funded program. In your case, you did not mention whether you are planning to apply for a loan in your home country or in the US (where I assume you're going to grad school). I think there are additional risks associated with taking a loan if you're an international student. For example, if you are from an underdeveloped country with more financial volatility and a weak currency, it is a really bad idea to apply for a loan. If you take a loan from your home country, the money you get may actually be too little when converted into US dollars. Conversely, if you get a loan from a US source, but then go back to your home country to work, your salary may be paid in the local currency and you may end up not being able to pay off your loan which is in US dollars. So the issue is complicated and I would recommend that you think it through before you take action. Also, depending on the situation, it might even be a better idea to apply again next year but this time target schools that have more funding. You may think losing one year is a big loss, but if it is going to save you from a huge financial burden, it might actually be a gain. Best wishes to you!

I guess the title is more or less self-explanatory. How do you tell your advisor that you don't like the research project that you're working on and that you'd like to move onto a different topic? I am a first-year PhD student in psychology and students are expected to start working on a research project in their first year in my program, in addition to doing coursework. During my initial meetings with my advisor in the fall semester, we were generally brainstorming and going over ideas for my project, but she dismissed many ideas I proposed, giving various reasons for why she thought they wouldn't be fruitful. Her intuitions are likely to be right, I think. But I felt insecure because of this, and having run out of novel ideas, I proposed working on a topic that was very similar to what I had worked on as an undergrad (it was familiar territory, after all) - and my advisor approved of this. So the work I am doing right now is an extension of what I did before. I am not very satisfied with this, but my dissatisfaction with the topic is not the only problem. First of all, the project is not working. My pilot experiments have failed to provide any interpretable results. Secondly, I was hoping to learn some new experimental techniques during my first few years in this PhD program (eye-tracking and/or brain-imaging) and I thought devising an experiment that uses these techniques would be helpful. But as things stand, I am stuck with a simple behavioral paradigm. I know you might tell me that I am being unfair and making a fuss unnecessarily, and that there is no "ranking" among experimental methods, that a behavioral paradigm may be just as valuable. But the neoliberal world of academia does not work that way, and I fear that I won't be a competitive candidate in the job market unless I diversify my skills during my PhD. For these reasons, I'd like to switch to a more fertile research topic that is interesting for me, marketable for academia, and allows me to learn new skills. But as I said, I have wasted my first year on a hopeless project. Worse yet, we are expected to continue working on our projects during the summer term and we will have undergraduate research assistants to work with us. I believe we have already been matched with our assistants, though I haven't met mine yet. This means I am going to be stuck with the same project for at least another 3 months. But I certainly don't want to continue working on this next year. How can I tactfully tell my advisor that I'd rather pursue a different topic? Have you ever faced a similar problem, and how did you handle it?

Hi @bibliophile222, thanks so much for replying. Yes, I did hear of speech-language pathology and I admit that it offers people a nice job alternative outside academia. Unfortunately, though, my subfield is not even close to this, and the things I work on and my skills aren't easily transferable to clinical practice.

Cross-posting from the international students thread, as I think this topic may have higher visibility here. Hello everyone, I am a first-year PhD student in psychology at a US university. Before that, I had a background in English language and linguistics, and I am working in the field of psycholinguistics. Throughout my brief research career, my focus has always been on pursuing a job in academia, but my first year in a PhD program has been somewhat disheartening as I have both realized how hard it is do significant contributions to science and to build a competitive CV, as well as how brutal the current job market is and how even some of the best graduates of my program gave up on academia and started seeking industry jobs. (I'm at a high-ranking institution, if that matters. People usually think that graduating from a top program gives you a "label" that you can leverage in your academic job search, but this is a misperception. It doesn't matter nearly as much as your publication record and your collaborations. So these graduates who went into industry have failed to find academic positions despite the name of a prestigious university in their CVs.) That is one reason why I decided to be wary of committing myself fully to an academic job and to keep my options open with regard to industry jobs. But there are two problems associated with that, and I would very much appreciate some advice and guidance on these matters from this community. The first one is a general question: for which industry jobs do you think skills in psycholinguistics would be considered an important asset? And what other skills are valuable? (I know for a fact that coding is important, and many people in my field consider looking for data science jobs as a back-up plan. I am already learning to code with R in my program, as part of our statistics courses, and I am also planning to start teaching myself Python this summer.) But what are some additional skills that I should try to acquire to make myself employable in industry? I could be interested in jobs in data science and in science journalism & media. (And perhaps other fields that could potentially trigger my interest. I am open to suggestions here. The most important thing is that I really enjoy jobs that are intellectually demanding and involve "research" of some kind. That's why data science and science journalism sound like attractive back-up plans to me, but I would be open to considering other career options that allow me to work on a "research" project and satisfy my curiosity.) The second question is tricky: This is the question that is more specifically related to my status as an F1 student. Our international office firmly told us that as F1 students, we are strictly prohibited from seeking off-campus employment. It is against the rules and could result in deportation - so no joking there. This prohibition also extends to even short-term employments that result in a one-time payment. For example, a couple of weeks ago, my advisor circulated an email she received from a museum. The museum was planning to open a new exhibit and the subject of the exhibit was relevant to my research interests (they were literally asking for a student interested in the psychology of language to consult them on the planning of the exhibit, in return for monetary compensation). The ad captured my interest, and I thought it could be one first step for me to dip my toes in the non-academic ocean. But I sent an email to an advisor from the international office to inquire whether I would be allowed to work a short-term consultation job like this and received the frustrating response that as an international student, I can never work outside the campus. I need special permission from the Department of Homeland Security, and this permission is given only when the off-campus job is directly related to our dissertation topic. As a first-year student, I obviously don't have a dissertation topic yet. Besides, this warning also means that I will probably never be able to work in data science or in media, since neither of these things will (probably) be directly relevant to my future PhD thesis anyway. I feel that this places a huge burden on international PhD students like myself. Since the academic job market is a mess, we should be allowed to diversify our CV by working in related industry jobs, but our immigration status makes this practically impossible. Is there a way to get around this? Should I try to pursue unpaid internships? Are there any international PhD students here who found industry jobs in the US (especially those with a psychology degree)? What would your advice be for a newbie? Any help you can provide is greatly appreciated. Thank you very much for your time ❤️

Hello everyone, I am a first-year PhD student in psychology at a US university. Before that, I had a background in English language and linguistics, and I am working in the field of psycholinguistics. Throughout my brief research career, my focus has always been on pursuing a job in academia, but my first year in a PhD program has been somewhat disheartening as I have both realized how hard it is do significant contributions to science and to build a competitive CV, as well as how brutal the current job market is and how even some of the best graduates of my program gave up on academia and started seeking industry jobs. (I'm at a high-ranking institution, if that matters. People usually think that graduating from a top program gives you a "label" that you can leverage in your academic job search, but this is a misperception. It doesn't matter nearly as much as your publication record and your collaborations. So these graduates who went into industry have failed to find academic positions despite the name of a prestigious university in their CVs.) That is one reason why I decided to be wary of committing myself fully to an academic job and to keep my options open with regard to industry jobs. But there are two problems associated with that, and I would very much appreciate some advice and guidance on these matters from this community. The first one is a general question: for which industry jobs do you think skills in psycholinguistics would be considered an important asset? And what other skills are valuable? (I know for a fact that coding is important, and many people in my field consider looking for data science jobs as a back-up plan. I am already learning to code with R in my program, as part of our statistics courses, and I am also planning to start teaching myself Python this summer.) But what are some additional skills that I should try to acquire to make myself employable in industry? I could be interested in jobs in data science and in science journalism & media. (And perhaps other fields that could potentially trigger my interest. I am open to suggestions here. The most important thing is that I really enjoy jobs that are intellectually demanding and involve "research" of some kind. That's why data science and science journalism sound like attractive back-up plans to me, but I would be open to considering other career options that allow me to work on a "research" project and satisfy my curiosity.) The second question is tricky: This is the question that is more specifically related to my status as an F1 student. Our international office firmly told us that as F1 students, we are strictly prohibited from seeking off-campus employment. It is against the rules and could result in deportation - so no joking there. This prohibition also extends to even short-term employments that result in a one-time payment. For example, a couple of weeks ago, my advisor circulated an email she received from a museum. The museum was planning to open a new exhibit and the subject of the exhibit was relevant to my research interests (they were literally asking for a student interested in the psychology of language to consult them on the planning of the exhibit, in return for monetary compensation). The ad captured my interest, and I thought it could be one first step for me to dip my toes in the non-academic ocean. But I sent an email to an advisor from the international office to inquire whether I would be allowed to work a short-term consultation job like this and received the frustrating response that as an international student, I can never work outside the campus. I need special permission from the Department of Homeland Security, and this permission is given only when the off-campus job is directly related to our dissertation topic. As a first-year student, I obviously don't have a dissertation topic yet. Besides, this warning also means that I will probably never be able to work in data science or in media, since neither of these things will (probably) be directly relevant to my future PhD thesis anyway. I feel that this places a huge burden on international PhD students like myself. Since the academic job market is a mess, we should be allowed to diversify our CV by working in related industry jobs, but our immigration status makes this practically impossible. Is there a way to get around this? Should I try to pursue unpaid internships? Are there any international PhD students here who found industry jobs in the US (especially those with a psychology degree)? What would your advice be for a newbie? Any help you can provide is greatly appreciated. Thank you very much for your time <3